Science AMA Series: I am John Cook, Climate Change Denial researcher, Climate Communication Fellow for the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland, and creator of SkepticalScience.com. Ask Me Anything!

Everyone has bias including scientists. That's why peer review is important, it is how we attempt to remove human fallibility and bias. No study is meant to be taken at its word based on how famous the scientist is. And even when there is peer consensus, we can and have been wrong. But that's not a reason to dismiss everything out of hand, if we have studies that look right and repeated studies prove it as well, then we carry on as if it was true even though it is absolutely possible next year we will discover something else that disproves it. Until that point though, we must decide to believe in our current research or shut our eyes and refuse to believe anything at all. There is no logical reason why any one individual can pick and choose what is and isn't true. If you decide you don't trust any scientists, no matter whether they are peer reviewed or agreed to upon an overwhelming consensus, and yet decide to believe one study and not another with neither being your specific field of research.. that is no longer skepticism, that is just picking what you want to believe.

Skepticism is applying reasoning and logic to determine validity and there is no reasoning that lets you cherry pick what you want to believe out of everything determined by others research.

I've never been to the Sun or to space; I have no personal data proving to me without a doubt that it isn't actually a very bright lamp mounted on a large globe very far up. The diagrams of the solar system and descriptions of the Sun I learned about in school.. I have to take it on faith that the world isn't lying to me about it or misled because I have no way of personally verifying everything they said. When I see someone post on Facebook that 'scientists declare eggs will kill you!', well that I won't believe until I see a study specifically stating that as its summary posted in a peer reviewed journal. Climate change is much more like the sun than a nutritional scare article though. The models don't have to completely accurately predict the future in order to prove a trend, and out of the people who dedicate their lives studying it, 97% are saying we caused it? That's either the worlds most incredibly organized and vast conspiracy, or you have to admit that there is more than the normal bias going on here. There is a ton of money in it for anyone denying climate change, so why would bias explain the 97% when there should be a higher ulterior motive to go the other way?

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